Is this scene at all inappropriate? An eleven-year-old boy and an eleven-year-old girl feel awkward after the girl compliments the boy, and they don’t know what to say as they look at each other with uncertainty. The boy’s eleven-year-old friend says, “Get a room.” As everyone knows, “Get a room” is a euphemism for “go make out or have sex” in private.

This exchange occurs in a very popular middle grade book I bought for my then-ten-year-old Little Brother mentee. As any responsible parent or mentor should, I read the book first. When I got to that line, I chose not to give it to my mentee.

This book has rave reviews from parents on Amazon. If those parents actually read the book and think eleven-year-olds having sex or even hinting at such behavior or joking about it is cute, there’s something wrong with those parents. Sadly, pushing the envelope in middle grade fiction is happening, just as it did long ago when teen lit was christened “Young Adult” (even though young adulthood, according to psychologists, and the law, ranges from age eighteen to twenty-five.) Thirteen years olds are young adults? According to the book industry they are. In reality, they are far from young adulthood. These are middle school kids, still adolescents, still children. Not young adults. Not even close. Even at eighteen, legal adults are still teens. But pushing kids to leapfrog over necessary developmental stages seems to be the current intent of all media, including books.

On Amazon, a middle grade book featuring twelve or thirteen year olds is listed as suitable for eight-year-olds. Why? To make more money for the publisher and Amazon. Anyone who’s ever raised children or taught them knows that a twelve-year-old is way ahead of an eight-year-old on the developmental scale, and no conscientious parents would allow their eight-year-old to pal around with twelve or thirteen-year-olds. So why is it suitable for eight year olds to read books aimed at twelve and thirteen-year-olds? It isn’t.

The excuse has been that children are demanding books about kids older than themselves. Not true. Children are curious about everything. If you put age-inappropriate material in front of them, they will watch it or read it, and then their brains will have been rewired so that they want more inappropriate stuff. That’s how our brains work, and it’s the essence of addiction. It’s bad enough that Hollywood seems bound and determined to rob children of their innocence, but the book industry used to take its job more seriously. Way too many TV shows aimed at children depict ten, eleven, twelve-year-olds on the prowl for a boyfriend or girlfriend, and the on-screen kids lament that they’re not in a relationship. Children haven’t changed. What they’re exposed to has. Especially social media. No child under high school age should have a smartphone, but millions do.

I often see what middle school kids post on social media, and it’s not good. A ten-year-old once told me he wanted a girlfriend. I asked why, and he didn’t know. But I know. That boy already has a smartphone and is on social media, where the message is loud and clear – if you’re not in a relationship, you’re a worthless failure and have no value in your own right, no matter your age.

I know twelve-year-olds with babies. This is a bad situation, for them and the babies they produce. Encouraging children and teens to have sex—even in wink, wink, nudge, nudge ways—is beyond disturbing, and I can’t understand this agenda to adultify children at younger and younger ages. It makes no sense. How often do you see boys and girls as young as eight or nine referred to as young men or young women in the news or on social media? Attune yourself to that notion and you’ll see it everywhere. Labelling children “young adults” defies all common sense and rationality. And it damages the children more than anyone else.

Check out the image I used to lead off this post. It’s a real ad for a child’s Peter Pan costume that purports to make your little boy look “sexy.” Clothes for little girls are already disturbing enough, but now little boys are being advertised as “sexy?” That’s sickening! If you tell children they are young adults, and allow them to access age-inappropriate media that calls them young adults, they are going to think they can engage in adult activities, like sex or drinking alcohol, to name two. And they will most certainly post inappropriate photos on social media so they can look “sexy” like the young Peter Pan above, except they are more likely to be wearing less clothing. Is there anyone out there who thinks this is a healthy trend?

An acclaimed middle grade book is called Wonder. In most ways, this is a terrific book with positive messages about acceptance. However, in this story, ten-year-olds are depicted as partying like teens, pairing up in boy-girl romantic relationships, and dating. And the worst part? These behaviors are presented as normative. Only one parent in the entire book tells her son he’s too young to date. At ten, he’s too young to date? Ya think? Of course, he is!

The fact that editors and publishers allow such messages to be sent to children brings me back to the agenda question. What is the agenda, and who stands to gain by it? I know who stands to lose – the children. They are sent so many mixed messages by media and society these days, it’s no wonder the number of adolescent mental health cases in America has skyrocketed in recent years. https://www.sovteens.com/mental-health/mental-illness-increasing-among-adolescents/

As authors, I believe it is our responsibility to present developmentally appropriate stories for children and teens. Books should be a more conscientious form of entertainment than Hollywood and social media, which seek to suck children into the addiction trap. Middle grade fiction should be for eleven, twelve, and thirteen year olds only, since they are middle schoolers, and the publishing industry needs to stop telling Amazon and other sites to list them as suitable for eight-year-olds. In addition, books with thirteen-year-olds can certainly involve skittishness on the part of boys and girls with each other, because that is reality, but nothing more is needed. Just as violence is kept at bay in middle grade fiction, romance/sex should be even more so.

As parents, we have so much to do without having to police the books our kids read like we police the media they pursue. But for the sake of children going through their natural developmental stages, we must be vigilant, and at least skim through any books our preteens want to read. At the very least, check the book out on LitPick.com, an online review site wherein teens and children review books aimed at their age group. They rate the books and provide content warnings, under the supervision of adults – https://litpick.com/.Commonsensemedia.org also has content ratings for children and teen books that are well-articulated, written by both parents and kids – https://www.commonsensemedia.org/. Also, if a book on Amazon is rated for age eight to twelve, it’s important to read the “What’s Inside” preview and the reviews. Check the negative reviews and look for clues to inappropriate content.

Childhood is already too short. If we allow Hollywood, social media, and now books to steal it away, that’s a crime of insurmountable proportions. Unplugging our kids from media, and making sure they have good books with positive, age-appropriate themes and messages, is an essential step toward molding them into healthy teens and decent adults.

I thought I’d devote a post to the fun of meme-making. I LOVE making memes to promote my books or precepts I live by. I use Photoshop to create my memes and feel I’ve gotten better over time at creating images that look reasonably professional. However, I’m not anywhere near a professional and that is obvious, but I have fun making them. Feel free to share any that you like, but please give me the credit. I’ll go in the order of book release dates, even though I might have created some memes after a book came out. You can learn more about all these books here on my website.

A MATTER OF TIME was my second book that mashed up several genres and time periods. This meme presents my original cover art from 2012 and one by a professional artist named Howard David Johnson created in 2016. The difference is, well, obvious. LOL

The CHILDREN OF THE KNIGHT series, published throughout 2013-2014, is more relevant now than when it came out, dealing with numerous social justice issues facing America today, especially those that impact marginalized children and teens. The target audience is high school youth and adults due to mature language and themes.

An ad I created for YA Books Central.

A poster I used for promotion that incorporates some of the final cover elements.

A meme that incorporates one of the primary themes.

An alternate take on possible cover art that I used to promote the second book. It teases a major revelation from the first chapter.

This meme was created by the assistant to a fellow author who was helping me promote this book.

Michael is a teen teetering on the edge of madness who leads Lance down a path toward imminent self-destruction.

This one is pretty self-explanatory, especially for readers of the books. Lance becomes a beloved figure worldwide who is invited to both the White House and Congress.

Again, this scene explains itself. If you want to learn more about the Children’s Bill of Rights, you’ll have to read the books.

Lance graduates high school. I made this to celebrate the graduation of a boy who loved the Children of the Knight series and admired Lance as a character. I posted this pic on his FB wall along with my congratulations.

I made this to promote the series. I even have a poster of it just in case I have the opportunity to attend an author event.

This is a Dream Cast poster I created for a CHILDREN OF THE KNIGHT blog tour in 2013. Obviously, the cast would change if the book were to be filmed now, but I think these actors would have been stellar.

SPINNER is a teen horror thriller that some reviewers have compared to Stephen King’s “It,” which I find very flattering. This book features teen protagonists who have disabilities and modeled on kids I taught for many years in my career as a high school teacher. I went overboard on the memes for this one. LOL Here are some that I used to promote this 2015 release. Enjoy!

I was asked to create a Spinner Dream Cast presentation for a YA Author Scavenger Hunt last fall. This is the result.

WARRIOR KIDS: A TALE OF NEW CAMELOT is my last published book and is a standalone sequel to the Children of the Knight Series aimed at Middle Grade and High School readers. It deals with the often contentious issue of climate change and can be safely used in school classrooms to teach kids about environmental concerns. There are extension activities at the back and, unlike the other Children of the Knight books, the language isn’t “street.” It does, however, depict how racism, the venal pursuit of fame, and “group think” prevent real progress toward fixing all human dilemmas. Here are the memes I’ve used to promote this book. BTW, for teachers, the book is available for free at https://sharemylesson.com/teaching-resource/middle-grade-novel-kids-vs-climate-change-275506.

This is the logo I created that the kids in the book wear on their shirts and beanies.

Lastly, here are some random memes I made that deal with important precepts, themes I write about, or what I think is important for people to consider.

So these are most of the memes I’ve created, but there are some I know I’ve forgotten because I’ve made so many. LOL Feel free to comment on any that you like or don’t like and, as I said before, feel free to share (but please give me credit. Thanks.) I hope you’ve enjoyed these images and the messages they contain as much as I enjoyed creating them. Meme-making rocks! Don’t you want to rush right to your computer and start meming? I do. Onward and upward!

As part of the YA Scavenger Hunt, I was asked to create a Dream Cast if my book, Spinner, was made into a film. Since the Hunt is over, I can share this on my own blog along with an “interview” written for the fictional Mark Twain High School newspaper created to support the initial release of the book. The interview introduces the main protagonists and reveals the ignorance special ed kids face on a daily basis. Feel free to comment on either the Dream Cast or the interview, especially if you have read the book or know kids we label “special ed.” Labels belong on food products, not people. I think all of us want to be seen as ourselves with unique qualities and abilities, but this country has an obsession with labels. Spinner is a horror thriller aimed at teens and adults who like a page-turning story featuring protagonists seldom seen as heroic because they have been slapped with a label that narrowly defines them. Check out the book on Amazon or Barnes and Noble and meet some unforgettable characters.

A Revealing Interview

by Karina Martinez for

The Daily Cougar

It is a somber day as I approached the lunch table. This group of SPED students (Special Education) has experienced a tragic loss – their teacher was killed last night, run down by a truck outside her apartment. We’ve never had such a tragedy at Mark Twain High. Ms. Lorna Ashley had been teaching Special Education for four years and her class was always self-contained. That means the students were with her the whole day, for every class. Her current group consists of six male students, all gathered around the most beat-up of the lunch tables not far from their classroom. I have my faithful photographer with me – Jasmine Rodriguez – and we both try to look professional as we stop at their table. These kids have a reputation around campus for being weird and usually nobody ever goes near them. One of the boys is in a wheelchair, but the others look normal. You’d never know they were Special Ed.

I introduce Jasmine and myself. The boys stare at us like we’re from Mars or something. The white haired boy, Alex, the one in the wheelchair, has these amazing blue eyes that almost make me forget what I was there for. I explain that I write for the school paper and we’re doing a story on Ms. Ashley’s death.

“Why?” That comes from the light-skinned black kid named Java. He glowers and looks suspiciously at the camera Jasmine holds.

“Well, we’ve never had anything like this happen before,” I explain, “and it’s big news when a teacher gets killed.”

Israel, dark hair, really handsome, blurts out, “What the hell?”

That catches me off-guard. “Well, I just mean, it’s something the school paper can’t ignore.”

Jorge, tall and thin with unkempt black hair, hands me a piece of paper with no expression on his face. It has a big red “V” scrawled on it. I exchange a nervous glance with Jasmine, who stifles a giggle, and then turn back to Jorge.

“What’s this for?”

“We’ve never had anything like this happen before,” Jorge says in a monotone voice, repeating my words to me. I confess, I’m feeling creeped out.

Roy, the skinny white kid with snakebite piercings in his lower lip brushes hair from in front of his eyes. Those eyes look sad to me. “Ms. Ashley was a great teacher. She was like a mom to us. That’s all you gotta write.”

There’s a Vietnamese kid named Cuong at the table, but he just plays with a Gameboy like we’re not even there. Alex stares at me with those blue eyes and I feel like he’s looking right through me. I shiver. He’s the one our readers most want to hear from because he’s the most disabled kid we have at Mark Twain, being in a wheelchair and all. So I focus on him.

“So, um, Alex, do you have anything to say about Ms. Ashley?”

Alex’s intense look doesn’t let up at all. His white blond hair falls across his forehead and back over his collar. His serious expression doesn’t hide his good looks. If he weren’t crippled he’d be hot enough to date.

“Like Roy said, Ms. Ashley was the best teacher I ever had,” Alex answers, his voice filled with sadness. “She never got mad at us when we couldn’t do something. She just helped us find some other way. She loved us.”

I take notes as he speaks, still feeling those deep blue eyes looking through me. “So, you guys are Special Ed, right?”

“Yeah, so?” Java says. He’s big and buff and wears one of those tight shirts like pro football players. He looks scary.

“Well, our readers don’t know much about being special ed. Are you guys like, retarded?”

I ask it innocently because that’s usually what special ed means, but Java’s face turns stormy.

“We are not retarded!” Israel shouts. Other kids milling about look over curiously. Now I feel embarrassed.

Alex places one hand on Roy’s arm and that calms him a little. He looks at Alex and Alex shakes his head slightly. Still angry, Roy re-seats himself.

“No, I can’t walk,” Alex replies, those eyes fixed intently on me.

I try to steer this interview into a non-threatening direction. “What’s it like, not to walk?”

“Shut up!” Israel says loudly. He can’t seem to speak in any tone other than loud. He draws more attention to me than I want.

Then Jorge says, “Shut up,” and sounds eerily like Israel. I shiver again.

“It’s okay, Izzy,” Alex says. I think he’s probably been asked that question a lot because he just sighs and looks up at me from his wheelchair. “What’s it like to walk? I never have so I don’t know.”

That answer floors me and I have no response.

“See?” Alex goes on. “Normal is different for everybody. Maybe you could print that and the kids around here might stop talking crap about us and calling me Roller Boy all the time. We’re not losers like everybody says. Roy could fix anything in this school that breaks down. And Java could kick ass on the football team ‘cept people keep calling him a dummy. He’s not. Not of us are. We’re just different.”

I’m trying to write down every word because it’s all so amazing and so unlike what I thought these kids were like. I guess I thought they were dumb because that’s what I always heard. I realize that this is the first time I ever interacted with them. Alex stops talking and I stop writing. The others are staring at me and I feel like I should say something, but don’t know what. Then it hits me.

“Could I try out your wheelchair?”

“The hell?” Israel blurts, even louder.

Alex looks at me with open-mouthed surprise and I realize I didn’t ask the question very well. “I, uh, I just thought I could write a better story about what it’s like to be crippled if I sat in your chair and, you know, wheeled around a little.”

Roy leaps to his feet again. “Get lost. We’re not freaks and Alex ain’t crippled! He can do anything you can and more!”

Jasmine giggles beside me and I nudge her, trying to salvage this interview.

“It’s okay, Roy,” Alex says quietly. “Let her try.”

“Alex! She’s just messing with you.”

“No, I’m not, really,” I answer quickly. “I just want to feel what it would be like to sit all the time.”

Roy’s angry look makes me realize I said the wrong thing again. I’m really wishing Ms. Jacobs hadn’t given me this assignment. Alex touches Roy’s arm again in a calming way and pushes himself up and out of his wheelchair onto the bench so easily I think I gasped. His arms and upper body look pretty buff, but he moved so easily I’m shocked.

“Go ahead,” he says. “Try it out.”

I feel all of them mad-dogging me as I step forward and uncertainly sit in the chair. I try to push forward, but my feet on the ground get in my way.

“Your feet go on the footrest,” Alex says and points to it.

I look down and see where he’s pointing and place my feet there. Then I start wheeling around. It’s fun, I find myself thinking, almost like riding in a Go-Kart. Jasmine snaps some pictures of me in the chair and the SPED kids watching.

“How is it?” Jasmine asks.

Before I can stop myself, I say, “It’s fun.”

I spin around and head back toward her. Other kids standing nearby laugh and point.

“Let me try,” Jasmine says.

I hop out of the chair and she plops into it. Wheeling herself around in circles, she makes like she’s going to run into another kid standing off to the side. The kid lurches back and Jasmine laughs. All the students standing around laugh and point to Alex and his friends. I hear one of them say, “Hey, it’s Roller Girl.”

“This is so cool,” Jasmine gushes, and I catch Alex’s facial expression when she does. He looks like someone punched him. Those blue eyes look so hurt I almost feel like crying. I hurry to Jasmine.

“Give him back the chair.”

Reluctantly, she steps out of it and I wheel the chair back to Alex. He gives me a look that pierces my heart and I realize how hurtful what we just did is to him. He slides himself deftly into the chair and pulls his feet onto the footrest.

Roy steps up to me. He’s really mad. “You had your fun, now get the hell outta here and leave us alone!”

I step back as all of them stand up to mad-dog me. Even the Vietnamese kid stops playing his game to glower. I exchange a nervous glance with Jasmine, who hurriedly snaps a few more pictures.

Jasmine grabs my arm to pull me away. I can’t help but look into Alex’s blue eyes one last time. He looks so wounded. “I’m sorry, Alex, about the chair thing. See ya around.”

Alex doesn’t answer, so I turn to follow Jasmine away into the crowd. The other kids are still laughing.

Note: This is how I wrote up the article, but Ms. Jacobs decided not to run it. She felt it would embarrass Alex and his friends, and then she spent an entire period teaching us proper ways to ask difficult questions during an interview. I know I blew it, but at least I now understand that the kids we call Special Ed are just as human as I am, and I plan to treat them that way from now on.

NOTE: This is NOT the official Hunt Post – the Official post about Jennifer Jenkins is dated October 4th.

Michael J. Bowler and SPINNER are part of Team Purple. I’m so excited to be part of my first scavenger hunt. Yay for purple! Hunt runs from October 4-9. Keep reading so you can play the game. Have fun and good hunting!

(Content that follows borrowed from YA Scavenger Hunt website.)

If you have never participated in a YA Scavenger Hunt before than this post is for you.

We are so glad that you have joined us! Hunting is so much fun and I always discover new authors and their books. It’s also fun to get to know each author and have access to exclusive content that each author offers. Oh, and I can’t neglect to mention all the amazing chances at prizes!

HOW DO I PARTICIPATE? WHAT DO I DO? I’M A NEWBIE! HELP!!!

The YA Scavenger Hunt is run twice a year. Once in April and once in October. It runs from Thursday to Sunday. So you have just three full days to participate.

We open author registration 6-8 weeks before each hunt. If you have a favorite YA author, this is the best time to reach out to them through twitter or Facebook or email and encourage them to sign up.

Author registration closes and teams are announced 1-2 weeks before the hunt begins. This gives everyone enough time to get their posts together and we can hopefully work out any kinks beforehand.

On Thursday at noon (pacific time) all authors posts go live and the hunt can begin. Then this is the part where you come in.

Pick a team or a specific author. Start there. Go to their site (we link to each author’s sites here at YA Scavenger Hunt).

Find their YA Scavenger Hunt post. It should be super easy to tell which one it is because it will have our graphic on it.

Read their post which will include an author bio, book info, exclusive content, (not always but in most cases) a giveaway, and a link to another author’s webpage.

Look for a number on the post. This could be big and colored. It could be “you need to know…” It should be pretty easy to figure out which number you need to know. Write this number down.

Click the link at the bottom of the post so you can continue the hunt within that same team.

Repeat steps 2-5 until you have visited all the authors for one team.

Add up the numbers that you collected from all the authors of one team. Visit our ENTER HERE page, find the appropriate Rafflecopter, and submit your entry.

Repeat for every team that you want.

Optionally, watch your TO BE READ list grow and grow.

Need just a bit more help? Here’s a sample scenario. Do not use these numbers for the actual hunt as they are just a sample.Let’s say Colleen Houck, Tera Lynn Childs, and Beth Revis are all on Team Yellow. I choose to start with Colleen Houck and go to her page. Colleen Houck is hosting Tera Lynn Childs so on Colleen’s page I will find information about Tera Lynn Childs, her book, and her exclusive content. The number I find is 7. The giveaway I will find is hosted by Colleen Houck though so if I enter the giveaway here, I’m entering to win a book from Colleen Houck.

Colleen Houck links to Tera Lynn Childs so I head there next. Tera Lynn Childs is hosting Beth Revis so I get to read about Beth Revis, her book, and her exclusive content. The number I see is 23. If I see a giveaway, this is for something from Tera Lynn Childs.

Tera Lynn Childs links to Beth Revis who is hosting Colleen Houck. I’ll read about Colleen Houck, her book, and her exclusive content with a giveaway by Beth Revis. The number here is 3. The link at the end of the post will go back to Colleen Houck at which point I know I am done with Team Yellow.

I take the three numbers I have collected (7, 23, and 3) and add them together (33). I head to the ENTER HERE page on YA Scavenger Hunt, find the Rafflecopter for Team Yellow and enter the number 33 to be entered to win a book from all three authors on that team.

As a child, I felt a strong connection to the Titanic disaster from the first moment I read about it, and then proceeded to devour every book published on the subject. I don’t quite know where that “pull” came from, but it was almost as if I’d been there in 1912 on that cold April night, even though such a thing would have been impossible. Or would it? Many people believe that after we die our souls transmigrate into others just being born. If each of us is unique with a distinctive soul all our own, how could this work? Maybe it’s what the Church refers to as Purgatory or Limbo – our souls are housed within other, distinctly unique people, until it’s our time to permanently move on. The distinctly unique person then feels an attachment to a past he or she was not a part of because of the other soul housed within. One character in A Matter of Time—Dan—takes offense at this notion when it’s postulated by the main character, Jamie. “I am not a bus stop,” he asserts indignantly. But what if we are? Could that explain why I, as a child, became obsessed with an event that happened decades before my birth? Or why I always felt an intense affinity for Native American culture? Was I at some time in the past also Native American? It’s a tantalizing concept and one I play with in A Matter of Time.

Some other “oddities” about Titanic and her fateful journey added fuel to my imagination and melded into the fanciful plot that became my story. Fifteen minutes before Titanic took her final plunge into the sea, Captain Smith relieved the two wireless officers of duty, telling them there was nothing more they could do. These men had been frantically calling for help on the Marconi wireless and had missed all but one of the lifeboats. Jack Phillips and Harold Bride exited the wireless cabin, which was located very near the already submerged bow of the ship. At that point, there was only one collapsible lifeboat left, strapped down very close to the rapidly rising seawater, and some crewmen were struggling to float it off into the ocean before it could be pulled under with the sinking ship.

As would be expected, Bride rushed forward to assist, since that final boat would be his only hope for survival. But Phillips did something odd and counterintuitive – he turned and headed aft, towards the sloping stern of Titanic! Why? Why go towards certain death when your salvation lay a few feet away? That anomalous behavior led me to create a reason for his choice, a fantastical reason, to be sure, but a reason that evolved into the basic plot of my book.

There was another little known fact I glommed on to because I was always fascinated by everything supernatural. Titanic was carrying that night, in her cargo hold, the mummy of an Egyptian priestess, from the temple of Amon Ra. This mummy had already gained a reputation for being cursed – several of its owners had died mysteriously and photographs of the wrapped corpse displayed a living woman with glaring eyes. Even the photographer who’d taken those pictures died suddenly. There were so many mishaps and deaths associated with this mummy that the British museum finally sold the cursed object to an American buyer. The buyer packed it up, sarcophagus and all, and shipped it off to New York—aboard Titanic.

Later, after the sinking, some of the more superstitious people of the day attributed the collision and sinking to the mummy’s presence on board the ship, another casualty of the same curse that had killed so many others. In my book, the sarcophagus, not the mummy, does play a major role in how events unspool on April 15th, 1912, and in fact, does contribute to the circumstances which lead to the collision. How? Well, that would be a spoiler, wouldn’t it? Suffice to say that the person using the sarcophagus previously inspired one of the evilest characters in literary history. To say more would ruin the voyage of discovery.

A Matter of Time is available as an eBook, an Audible download read by the super-talented Aaron Landon, and in paperback. Purchase on Amazon.

I always knew I wanted to be a writer. I wrote short stories as a kid and read voraciously and loved telling tall tales to anyone who would listen. But I also loved movies and thought screenwriting might be an easier entrée into a writing career. Not so fast, young padawan…

In college I chose to double major in English literature and theater arts. In both arenas I did lots of creative writing. I wrote short stories and plays and directed plays and acted in plays, all of which gave me insights into how to tell stories and write dialogue that actors could actually speak without sounding stilted or twisting their tongues into knots. Any of you actors out there know what I’m talking about.

For graduate school, I enrolled at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles to pursue my dream of becoming a scriptwriter. I learned television and film writing formats, as well as all the technical aspects of making a film. I wrote and directed some shorts, wrote television scripts, and submitted a final “thesis” screenplay that I never did anything with except utilize its themes in later stories.

After graduation, I partnered with two fellow film majors to make low budget direct to video horror movies. You can find me on IMDB and all those films aren’t as bad as I remember them (though some are real stinkers. Ha!). In fact, one of my low-budget “gems”—Hell Spa (later retitled Club Dead and sporting a different beginning and ending featuring former Disney child star Tommy Kirk)—is soon to get a new release on DVD and VHS, bigger than it ever got before. Apparently there’s some nostalgia for those old films from the 80’s. LOL The story of how that film is resurfacing is quite fascinating, but since it’s all still unfolding I’ll share it down the line in a new post.

In any case, each of those films was a learning experience. Whether I wrote, directed, produced, acted in, handled sound or some other technical function, each endeavor helped me understand writing a little better. As well-made as most Hollywood films are today, the weakest aspect is usually the script, and that angers me. It’s not difficult to get a screenplay right before going into production. Sometimes aspects of a script change or dialogue shifts due to realities of filming, especially if a film is low budget like mine were. But with the massive budgets these films have today, there’s no excuse for a bad script. Sorry, folks. There isn’t.

Most film schools today provide internship opportunities in the industry for their students, opportunities I didn’t have back in the day when I attended LMU. Having said that, breaking into the business via screenwriting is still probably the most difficult pathway. Everybody and their pit bull have a screenplay idea or an actual script already written. However, getting that script to someone who can actually move it forward is almost like winning the lottery.

I wrote a number of screenplays after grad school and tried numerous creative avenues to get those scripts to agents or producers. I even scaled the walls of the Burbank Studios one time to get a script to some producer, but never found his office. I finally began teaching high school and put writing aside. I continued to enter my scripts in screenplay competitions, but never won any of them. Those competitions are about the only way an un-agented writer can get his or her script in front of people who might be able to move it forward. So if you write a script, that avenue might be your best shot. Francis Ford Coppola, director of the Godfather movies, has a big screenplay contest via Zoetrope Studios, and there are many others, large and small, to choose from. Google “screenplay competitions” and they will all pop up. There is, of course, an entry fee, but the fee rule applies to book award competitions, too. For that fee there is the possibility someone significant will read your work. All it takes is one person and you could be on your way. Alas, I have never found him or her.

I wrote my first book in the early years of teaching and attempted to interest agents and publishers. No dice. Years later, with the advent of self-publishing, I did release that book – a middle grade+ urban fantasy set in Northern California in 1970 entitled A Boy and His Dragon. Of course, with no budget for promotion, the book never went anywhere. But I had a number of screenplays in my file cabinet at home and decided maybe I should turn some of them into novels. After all, I already had the templates, so why not flesh them out? With small press publishers springing up, I thought maybe one of those stories might get noticed. I started with my longest screenplay, A Matter of Time. It was a time travel romance set in 1985 and 1912 and involved the sinking of Titanic. With the 100th anniversary of Titanic’s sinking approaching in 2012, I set about turning that script into a novel. Once complete, I actually found an agent willing to shop it around, but no publisher wanted it. So I self-published in early 2012 to coincide with the anniversary of the sinking and the book went nowhere, just like my first.

Since then, I converted my scripts Children of the Knight and Healer (which became Spinner) into novels that were published by small press publishers, and I’m currently shopping around the novelization of Like A Hero, a finalist in the Shriekfest Screenplay Competition. Like A Hero was a decent script, but I fleshed it out into what I’ve been told by beta readers is an excellent book. So far not a single agent or indie publisher has agreed with those betas, but it hasn’t been rejected by everyone I sent it to. Yet.

So, how do the two art forms differ? Quite a lot, actually, which is why beloved books seldom feel the same when transferred to the screen.

The one essential element that’s necessary for both formats is “showing,” rather than “telling.” Obviously, film is a visual medium and the screenwriter has no option for “telling” the audience anything unless it’s via voice over narration, a lazy technique that seldom works. No, in a script the writer has to convey with action and dialogue everything important about a character and everything needed for the plot to make sense. Descriptions are kept to a minimum because the director will visualize the story however he or she sees fit. The writer provides a very basic outline of a character, i.e. “he’s fifteen years old, surfer blond hair, vibrant blue eyes, in a wheelchair, dresses emo style.” That’s the description of Alex, my main teen protagonist in the screenplay Healer (which begat the novel Spinner.) Such a description would never wash in a book. In a novel, the reader should get a general picture of a character at first, with further details added in along the way. Long paragraph descriptions of what characters look like constitute “telling,” rather than “showing” a character through setting or action or even dialogue, i.e. another character: “I love your eyes. They look so blue, like the earth from space.” Showing is always better than telling.

Another essential requirement for both mediums is a dynamic opening, specifically the first ten pages. They have to be good. If the reader, or the viewer, isn’t hooked right away you’re likely to lose him or her for good. Agents and publishers are no different than film executives – they want to be drawn into your story immediately and feel excited about continuing. So start off with a bang whenever possible. Spinner begins with Alex dreaming that his favorite teacher is pushed in front of a truck after being mauled by cats. Children of the Knight begins with the police breaking up a large gang brawl in a barrio section of Los Angeles. Like A Hero begins with a hostage standoff at a middle school graduation. You get the idea.

Writing a script requires a screenwriting program like Final Draft or Movie Magic Screenwriter because the parameters are very specific. Scripts not adhering to the proper format won’t even be accepted in competitions. Each scene is established by a scene location and time of day. Character names appear in the middle of the page with dialogue in narrow margins beneath. Action blocks use the full margins and should be detailed enough for a reader to know what’s happening, but not as descriptive as in a book. If some object or person is very important to the story, you can use “CU” for Close Up” or write “Close On” to highlight it. Otherwise, it’s best to avoid too much “directing” in a spec script, i.e. including camera angles and such. Spec scripts are those you were not hired to write, but have written on your own and submitted somewhere in the hopes it will be acquired by a producer. Most screenplays are approximately one hundred twenty pages, with the generally accepted notion that one page equals one minute of screen time. Obviously, this varies. Most competitions will accept scripts up to one hundred thirty pages.

Because of its limitations, screenwriting will feel restrictive to anyone who started out writing novels. However, the format teaches us writers how to think differently, more visually, with a greater degree of cleverness if we want to get our ideas across to a viewing audience. I began as a screenwriter and filmmaker and both of those helped me as a novelist, I think. Reviewers have often commented that when reading my books they feel like they’re watching a film. They can visualize everything in more than enough detail, but don’t feel bogged down by unnecessary descriptive information or too much “telling” of what characters are thinking or feeling. They get to “experience” what the characters do and feel and seem to like that style of writing.

Converting a script into a book allows for more information and greater depth of characterization and character interaction. You can have lengthy conversations between characters in a book (though I try not to do this often) whereas on screen dialogue scenes should be relatively short and always peppered with action or something visual to hold the attention of the audience. Obviously in a book, the author can share the thoughts and inner feelings of a character to give readers more insight. This cannot be done in a film. Much of that is left to the actor to convey, and good actors play subtext masterfully. Case in point – I found the character of Katniss Everdeen rather dull and almost entirely reactive in the Hunger Games books. However, Jennifer Lawrence brought astounding depth to that character and said more with a single facial expression than any author could do in pages of description. So yes, good actors truly bring your characters to life.

As an interesting sidelight, after I turned the screenplay Healer into the novel Spinner and added quite a bit to the storyline, I decided to turn the novel back into a screenplay to enter it into competitions. Even though I’d written the book, and had previously written the script, I found the task challenging, as I’d never adapted a book before. Character scenes that advanced relationships often had to fall by the wayside because the book was long and I couldn’t have a three hundred-page screenplay. Such scenes also slowed down the pacing. The pacing of a script is different than a novel because an audience will be sitting through the film all at once, as opposed to putting down a book and returning to it.

I also had to figure out how to visualize important information, like Alex’s backstory, into a format so the audience would not be bored. Turning key thoughts and feelings of characters into dialogue or action also proved tricky. Spinner is a very visual book with lots of spooky scenes (the kids creeping around a graveyard at night) and action sequences (Alex in his wheelchair hanging onto the back of a speeding pickup truck while the bad guys pursue in a car) that translated well to script format. But the supernatural “connection” Alex had with his friends, as well as his “spinning” ability, were less easy to “show,” rather than “tell.” The novel is four hundred sixty-one pages and the screenplay came out to one hundred sixty-one, so you can see I had to cut a lot, including a couple of subplots that enhanced the novel but were not essential to the script. I entered the screenplay in three competitions. It achieved semi-finalist status in one, and I’ve not heard back from the other two.

So, you want to be a writer, right? Here’s my take on novels versus screenplays: both are very difficult to market to the right people. Books are easier to get published these days, especially since you can self-publish, as I’ve done with most of my books. Did having a small press publisher help with the two books that had one? Not at all. Sadly, they have no greater access to the big journals than I do. And by big journals, I mean School Library Journal, Booklist, Library Journal, Publisher’s Weekly, to name a few. Especially with books aimed at teenagers or kids, without reviews and promotion from those journals, it’s almost impossible for an author to reach the target audience. If a writer pens books for adults, the field is wider and the chances for success are greater.

Promotion is left to the author whether the book is small press or self-published. There are a number of virtual online blog tours that can help raise exposure and interest level for a book (Tribute Books Blog Tours and Sage’s Blog Tours being two excellent choices), but again, these are mainly successful with books aimed at adults. For screenplays, as noted above, there are really just “competitions” that might showcase your script to industry professionals. If you actually know someone in the film industry who would read your script, then by all means write it. But make sure you have others beta read it and help you polish it so the script is the best it can be. You will only get one shot at impressing that person you know.

So there you have my experiences writing screenplays and books and attempting to market both to the appropriate people. I hope I haven’t discouraged anyone out there. Yes, it’s an uphill battle in either arena, and will require a lot of time and effort on your part. But your dream is to be a writer, right? So isn’t your dream worth all that effort? Only you can decide. But one thing I know from reading lots of books and seeing lots of films – we NEED good writers, especially those who think outside the box and don’t imitate the same old formula or try to create the next carbon copy of Hunger Games or Twilight. So please, if you have an original story to tell, tell it. Share it. Someone will appreciate it, even if you don’t become a best-selling author or six-figure screenwriter. Your story will change someone’s life. Even mine have, and I’m an author no one has ever heard of. But that’s another story for some other time. For now, keep writing!